


Rings on a Tree Stump

by you_cannot_define_me



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers - Ambiguous Fandom
Genre: A slightly more positive take on Steve's ending, Avengers: Endgame (Movie), Avengers: Endgame (Movie) Spoilers, Bucky Barnes Feels, Bucky Barnes Is a Good Bro, Bucky Barnes Remembers, Canon Compliant, Endgame, Gen, POV Steve Rogers, Post-Avengers: Endgame (Movie), Steve Rogers Feels, to celebrate FATWS
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-17
Updated: 2021-03-17
Packaged: 2021-03-25 19:07:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 830
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30093744
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/you_cannot_define_me/pseuds/you_cannot_define_me
Summary: Tony's dead, the world is saved, and Steve is a little lost.





	Rings on a Tree Stump

**Author's Note:**

> It's taken me nearly two years, but here's an Endgame fic about Steve. Since FATWS is coming out this Friday, I felt like I owed it to him. I also have wanted to understand his ending a bit more--so while this is technically canon-compliant, I'm also definitely giving my own take on it! Let me know what you think :)

Steve is on his knees, and there are tears tracing lines through the dirt on his face.

Strange had said it was the only way. As Steve looks at him now, slumping yet still too rigid, he sees someone he remembers from a lonely bar in Brooklyn many long years ago. It brings him no comfort to see himself reflected here. Repeated, as the past is doomed to be.

His eyes move back to Tony and he lets the grief wash over him once more. There was so much they'd never said to each other, so many things that still felt like unfinished sketches, just lines with no guidance or shading. They hadn't known where they'd been going--or maybe it was only Steve that hadn't. That look on Tony's face as he stared up at Thanos...he'd seemed almost as old as Steve, filled with that same stern resolve that only time can build. Maybe he had known, all along, what it was all coming to.

Another tear carves its trail through the dirt, washing it clean. Making a way forward.

+++

After the funeral, Steve sits down quietly by the water's edge and looks out at the ripples on the lake. There's a breeze, but he hardly notices it; it just plays with the edges of his suit, and tosses along a memory or two. For the first time in a long while, he wishes he had his sketchbook.

With little more than a rustle of the grass, Bucky sits down beside him. "Beautiful, isn't it?" he says, as though he's read Steve's mind, and Steve gives a small nod in reply.

Neither of them look at each other, instead keeping their eyes fixed on the waves that rise and fade away.

"Steve," Bucky says, slow and steady, "you don't belong here."

The water whispers in the space between their words. Steve breathes and drinks in the quiet.

"I know."

"What are you going to do?" asks Bucky, though he sounds as though he already knows. He always used to.

Steve laughs, short and without mirth. "What's left to do?" He shakes his head. "These last five years, Buck--I feel like I've done everything. For once, I think I'd like to just...be."

Bucky nods, and Steve knows that they've fallen into their familiar grooves of understanding and being understood. The silence stretches on, the faint chirping of birds carrying across the water.

"It's ok, you know," says Bucky. He looks at Steve for the first time, and Steve meets his gaze. "To leave."

Steve's expression doesn't shift, and Bucky looks away. "You've always been a man out of time, Steve. You left a lot behind." 

"You did too, Buck," says Steve. He pauses. "We're both relics, the two of us."

Bucky shakes his head, heavy and tired. "Whether you can call it a life or not, I lived through all those years. I don't have anywhere to go back to." He holds out his metal hand in front of him, and it glints in the sunlight. "I'm a different man now."

He looks back at Steve again, intently. "But you're the same Steve I always knew. Deep down." Steve starts to disagree, to say that these years without Bucky, long and gray and dark, have changed him, that he's aged eighty years in the span of five--and Bucky, calm as always, says simply, "You deserve the peace you've been looking for."

Steve doesn't have anything to say to that. So he puts his hand on Bucky's shoulder and looks back out at the water.

+++

In years to come, people in Brooklyn will tell stories of their guardian angel. He always seems to turn up exactly when he's needed: one day he fixes a broken-down car, the next a leaky roof; sometimes he comes carrying lost puppies and flown-off balloons. Some think he used to be a soldier, but the truth is, no one quite knows who he is, or where he came from--just that he feels like he belongs there, like an old sturdy tree belongs in the heart of a forest. And indeed, no one remembers when he first arrived, or can say how old he is. In fact, they don't even know his name. He hardly says a word to them, just smiles knowingly, and is always sure to nod before he goes to acknowledge their shouts of thanks.

Once, though, if the stories are true, someone--some child, they say, young and thin--had spoken to him. He'd seen him on the street, picking out fruit at a vendor's stand. The child had glanced up under the brim of his hat, to see if it was really him, and recognized the smile that met him as he did. So, as children do, he'd looked at him and asked, "Mister--why do you help people?"

And the man looked back at him, smiled, and said, "I'm just trying to be a good man."


End file.
